Tower of Babel
by MartyrFan
Summary: Bellwether never said where she learned about the Night Howler and its maddening effects. How did she learn about it, and why are mammals now sentient? What if the story behind the animals' rise to intelligence, the rise of Zootopia, and the origin of the Night Howlers are far darker than anyone could have imagined? WARNING: Contains spoilers for movie.
**I went to the theater on the 12th to see "Zootopia". No sooner had the credits started to roll than I was already starting to plan a fanfic on it. Four days later and here is the result. Before I went to see the movie, I had a personal theory going that a human was responsible for the animals that went feral. I was surprised when it turned out to be Bellwether. They did a pretty good job with hiding who it was. I even began to suspect Chief Bogo before that little reveal. The guy was a real jerk, though in hindsight, his job doesn't call for him to be nice to everyone (though he didn't need to automatically assume that Judy wasn't going to be a good police officer).**

 **Combining my theory with movie canon allowed for the creation of this fanfic. It's a bit darker than the movie, so be prepared. This is meant to be a oneshot for now. I've got ideas for a continuation, though I don't think I'll be writing it. At least, not until "Hysteria Unbound", "X-Men: Light Within Darkness", and my "WonderShock" project are all done. Even then...**

 **Be sure to tell me what you think in a review or PM me. Constructive criticism is much appreciated. Enjoy!**

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 **Tower of Babel**

In a semi-darkened room full of holographic computer monitors and screens, a man wearing an off-white coat sat staring intensely at one of the holographic displays in the chamber, occasionally sipping from the large cup in his right hand.

On the holographic display, a lavender-eyed bunny wearing a police uniform stood up to a podium and began to deliver her speech. The banner over the outdoor stage read "Zootopia Police Academy Graduation Ceremony" and the audience consisted of various mammals, most of them also dressed in police uniforms. The ceremony was in honor of the Academy's first fox cop, who was standing at the front of the crowd, wearing a pair of aviators and a satisfied smirk on his face. In any other place or time, this would be one of those animated movies where anthropomorphic animals lived in a society very much like the real world.

This was no movie. This was the real world, the reality in which he lived. A world where humanity lived in and around hidden facilities across the world, and where a civilization of sentient animals thrived in a world swept clean of even the ruins of human civilization.

The man, a Claude Hanson by name, leaned back in his chair and studied the screens showing the various locations of "Zootopia" (as its inhabitants called it) and slowly took a sip of his drink. Personally, he hated the taste of coffee, but since caffeine's only real effect on him was to keep him awake (his roommate got the shakes whenever he ingested any), he learned to live with the taste. His thoughts turned from the rationing of sugar to the events that made it possible for him to study a city-state with a population of sentient mammals.

In the early 21st century, the world was at the crossroads between war and peace, chaos and order. The global economy had been in a downward spiral, the tensions between nations, religions, and corporations were coming to a head, and everywhere, people were divided. Friends, family, cities, nations, countries, the whole world was divided by everything imaginable. Economics, politics, religion, nationality, race, ideology; it was a powder keg made of a thousand different volatile chemicals combined into a single cocktail of fire and death.

The situation had showed itself to be a steady state of decline. All opportunities to begin reversing the degeneration was met with failure and/or compromise. The point of no return was passed long before the deluge finally started.

In a single year, the tottering stack of cards that was human civilization was ignited by the firecracker hidden with its crumbling structure. Two horrific events followed one after the other: The Third World War started, tailed a week afterwards by the Second American Civil War. The one-two punch blew the false economic stability into a super-depression. With one of the world superpowers fighting against itself, the dictators and tyrants of the world arose to enact their agendas upon the world. Bullets and missiles filled the air, cities toppled, children screamed, soldiers and civilians died alike from horrendous new weapons, and nuclear mushrooms bloomed across the world.

The coup de gras came in the form of a biological weapon which would become known by a variety of names: Viral Rabies, Mad Human Disease, and ultimately, the Devolution Virus, all fitting names considering that those who contracted the virus degraded into animalistic rage. The virus spread across the world, ending every conflict it came across, and nearly all human civilization with it. The survivors, both those lucky enough to possess an immunity to the virus and those who were able to avoid the disease entirely, hid away in doomsday shelters and in the vast tracts of the wilderness across the world, watching from a safe distance as their feral brethren destroyed themselves.

When the dust finally settled, only those immune to the disease were allowed outside the shelters. From a former population of billions, there was only a few million spread across the world. The survivors slowly came together and formed settlements around the larger shelters. They expanded both across the land surrounding the shelters and under them as well. Hope began to return to the survivors.

It was during this time that it was discovered that certain species of mammal had contracted the Devolution Virus, but oddly enough, they weren't experiencing any of the symptoms that humans experienced when infected with the virus. In fact, they seemed to have increased intelligence and empathy with other mammals. At the time, it decided that this discovery would be put on the back-burner until adequate resources could be allotted for studying the phenomena.

The next few centuries were a period of steady, but slow growth. The shelters came together and formed a government as soon as local problems allowed them to devote their energies to uniting. The Confederacy of Humanity was formed from that meeting. A government which allotted the power to the local governments was more practical in this case due to the large distances separating the shelters from each other.

Time went on, and with it, the size of re-explored territory grew. Eventually, a group of explorers/scavengers came across ground zero of the Devolution Virus's release. What they found right in the center of the site was shocking beyond all belief.

Documentation of higher levels of intelligence in mammals had become an almost daily occurrence. The sight of the Virus's release, where it would be most concentrated, was unbelievable. There was a settlement, not of humans, but of _animal._ Several different species in fact, working together to erect a building and to gather fruit from a nearby wild orchard. A few of the smaller animals, mainly hares and bunnies, were even walking unsteadily on their hind legs, with some of the larger animals attempting to do the same. They were even communicating in sign language and broken English. The team avoided contact with the settlement's inhabitants and settled for setting up a series of very small surveillance cameras around the settlement. The act would set the Confederacy's precedent in studying these creatures.

The reaction to the discovery was varied across the Confederacy. Many voices arose as to what they should do about these unique animals. The opinions ranged from contacting them to leaving them alone to utterly destroying them. After a month of political, philosophical, and ethical debates and arguments, it was decided that they would study the progress of the animals via the surveillance cameras set up around their settlement. Laws were set up that promised heavy penalties for anyone who interfered in the animal settlement, it didn't matter whether the intentions were benevolent towards the animals or boded ill for them.

The animals in question were a variety of species. Apparently, there had been a zoo near the D-Virus's release site, considering the variety of the animals in the small space. The only domesticated animal affected by the virus was _Sus domesticus_ , the domestic pig. The rest were wild animals, most of them from the continent of Africa, which only helped to confirm the zoo theory. It was noted that there appeared to be a divisions within the animal colony, the main one between the carnivores and their former food (the predators had resorted to fish and non-mammals as a substitute).

As time passed and the Confederacy kept its distance from the animal colony while working on its own progress, the animal civilization grew and prospered. Oddly enough, "Zootopia", as it inhabitants came to call it, developed along the same lines that human civilization had developed, minus the concept of nations. It was a city state, all on its own in the vast wilderness. Quite a few of the more religious Confederates theorized that Zootopia was the animal version of Babel, and that something would eventually happen to drive the animals into different nation-states.

This never happened. The city's inhabitants were divided of course, but the city never fractured into competing city and later nations.

The Confederacy's scientists also noted that the animals' behavior mirrored that of human beings. They could be cruel, and they could kind. Avarice and charity, selfishness and generosity, dishonesty and candor, prejudice and understanding, hatred and love, evil and good. The two-sided coin that so aptly described the "human condition" could be applied to the animals. Only, it was no longer the _human_ condition; it was now the Sentient Condition.

Studying Zootopia and its inhabitants through their advanced surveillance systems (micro-cameras set up in public places and drones the size of a fly) became both a pastime for many of the Confederacy's citizens, as well as a widely-used class project for psychology and sociology college majors (since Zootopia's citizens acted much like humans, it was a viable option for studying the fields).

As the centuries passed, the similarities between the cultural, sociological, and technological development of human civilization and Zootopia was uncanny. More than uncanny. _Unreal._ The Stone Age, the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Medieval Era, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and now the Information Age. There were differences here and there considering they were different from humans in biology and physiology, but overall, it matched almost perfectly with human history.

Quite a few of Zootopia's technological advancements diverged from human tech, mainly in the field of climate control. Tundratown, Sahara Square, and the Rainforest District were artificial climates made for the species that thrived in the environments their ancestors had lived in.

A full two thousand years after the D-Virus's release, after the discovery of the Zootopia by the Confederacy, Zootopia had somehow become a mirror image of the culture of America in the early 21st century. The movies were practically copies of that era's films, only with animal actors instead of human ones and differently worded titles. The Twilight Zone had come to the real world.

And that was where Claude Hanson came in.

Claude had grown up in a farming settlement outside one of the more remote Shelters. Even when he was a child, he had been fascinated with the hows and whys of the human mind. Why did his father felt obligated to sell fruit to their meaner neighbors down the road? Why did his older brother like girls with red or brunette hair? Why did the neighborhood bully enjoy picking on a specific kid or group of kids? The questions never lost their ability to intrigue him.

As he grew older, he also began to gain an interest with the thought process of the entire community. Why did it take so long for newcomers to be accepted into the community? Why was there an air of reservation with those who were "different"? Why did others go out of their way to make them welcome? Why were the oldest children in a family usually the ones to leave the community entirely when they reached adulthood? This last question didn't apply to his older brother, however.

It wasn't much of a surprise when he decided to go to the Confederacy University and double major in psychology and sociology. When he wasn't in the library or the study halls going over his books or discussing the newest sociologic theories with his classmates and friends, he was working at his job making sure the college's connection to the surveillance systems in Zootopia up and running (he had a knack with electronics that came from watching his father and brother doing repair work on various farm machines).

It was during this time that he got his first good look at Zootopia and its inhabitants. The novelty of watching Zootopia's inhabitants go about their lives had long since worn off, but they were still studied by many of the Confederacy's academia and student body. He couldn't help but be intrigued by the behavior of the Zootopians, how human they were, and at the same time, how different.

Looking at some history books and articles, Claude further saw just how much their culture paralleled that of the world's biggest superpower just prior to its fall. His distaste for coffee was only exceeded by his scorn for the culture of that day. How could they believe that the problems of their day could have no other outcome than destruction and fire? How could they look at the decadence, prejudice, hate, and division of their time and somehow think that somehow, someday the world's problems would magically be solved and they could all get on with their lives? The issue was that everyone had their own version of utopia, the perfect world: Their world, which was ultimately incompatible with all others.

As he saw that same attitude manifesting itself in the Zootopian's culture, he could see all the variables that would allow for their civilization to come apart at the seams: Prejudice directed at both predator and prey, arrogant politicians that had their own agenda, pathetic "bandage" policies at fixing the current problems, and many others. Slowly, Claude began to entertain ideas of bringing down Zootopia from the inside, if only to prove to himself and others how idiotic the old world's culture had been, and by extension how stupid the Zootopians were in their happy, little lives.

His breakthrough finally came in the form of a downtrodden sheep named Bellwether. He had to complete a psychology project where he would study one of the Zootopians and report on their behaviors and any variables responsible for those behaviors. She had been beaten down her entire life by predators, and by prey that looked down on her because she was just a sheep. When she was picked to be the Assistant Mayor of Zootopia as part of Mayor Lionheart's Mammal Inclusion Intuitive, she finally felt that things were looking up for. Turned out, the position of Assistant Mayor was nothing more than the job of a glorified secretary, and while Lionheart was no bigot, he wasn't that great of a boss. In private, she would say that Lionheart had only put her in her position to win the sheep vote, to which Claude heartily agreed.

During that time, Claude learned that a bio-chemistry major friend of his, Abdul, had discovered a new property of a certain kind of flower. The "Night Howler" flower was well-known for its ability to naturally repel insects. Claude's father had used the plant to ward off pests from the farm's crops. What Abdul had discovered was that certain chemicals in the flowers had a strange and disturbing effect upon anything who ingested them; Abdul's white lab rats became vicious and far more feral than any rat raised in captivity could be. With a concentrated dose, mere skin contact with the substance was enough for a subject to go mad.

Abdul's project results were so alarmingly that the university's official shut his project down for fear that he had discovered some long lost strain of the D-Virus. While they were studying the flower itself for any traces of the disease, Claude approached Abdul about his research and expressed curiosity about the formula itself. Glad that someone wanted to talk about his project out of sincere curiosity and not apprehension, Abdul even gave him a copy of his notes for psychological research.

Borrowing some parts from his engineering friends (Claude's circle of friends were from a wide variety of majors), he was able to piece together a delivery drone and a communications array that would patch him into Zootopia's cell phone network. He was able to contact Bellwether; he was amazed just how easily he was slipped into the role of manipulator, convincing her within fifteen minutes that he emphasized with the humanoid sheep and that he wanted to help her. He told her that he had a plan for bringing down the predators of Zootopia and giving the prey the dominance she so greatly desired. After that, she was practically putty in his hands.

Claude would never forget that night he gave Bellwether the Night Howler notes. There he was, sitting in his college dorm room at his computer, terrified that his roommate was going to return any minute and see him breaking one of the Confederacy's oldest laws. Thankfully for him, the University was located at the Shelter closest to Zootopia, and his drone was small enough to be mistaken for a large bird by both Confederacy and Zootopian radar. Bellwether was at their designated meeting place when the drone arrived bearing its cargo of Night Howler notes. Though she was disappointed that they weren't going to meet, the expression on Bellwether's face when he finished telling her his plan for driving out the predators of Zootopia was one of pure joy. Claude couldn't believe his luck in finding an individual that hated predators as much as she did.

The plan was simple enough: Simply shoot predatory Zootopians with doses of the Night Howler concentrate and let their "relapse" back into feral, animalistic behavior drive the public into a panic, paving the way for an anti-predator administration and laws. He would then continue supplying similar plans to others until Zootopia collapsed in on itself.

In Zootopia, fourteen predatory animals disappeared within a matter of a few weeks, puzzling the Zootopia Police Department. In the Confederate State University, there was an uproar that a Zootopian had somehow managed to replicate the Night Howler concentrate on their own and using it to drive certain animals mad. The uproar lessened when it was discovered that the Night Howler's maddening properties had nothing to do with the Devolution Virus.

Claude was just glad that no one suspected a Confederate of giving Bellwether what she needed. His reports of her were definitely going to earn point for originality; what psychology student was lucky enough to snag such an interesting case?

When Bellwether was attending the Zootopia Police Academy Graduation Ceremony, Claude didn't think anything of her first meeting with valedictorian Judy Hopps, the first bunny police officer. He was too busy glaring at the image of Lionheart, who had hired a private security firm to keep the "savage" predators from the public eye and figure out what was wrong with them, to take much notice of the bunny.

When that same bunny, along with a fox of all things, exposed Lionheart's cover-up of the feral animals, no one was more surprised than he. When Officer Judy Hopps stood to her first press interview and basically said that the whole cause for the missing animals' savage behavior was because of their "biology" and that they regressing to their natural instincts, Claude had started laughing.

Not only was Zootopia's public aware of the "savage" predators, but here was the hero, rookie Officer Judy Hopps, who had exposed their corrupt mayor, jumpstarting his whole plan to bring down Zootopia from the inside. He had continued to chuckle as he watched the fox, Nick Wilde, stalk angrily away as Judy was engulfed by reporters, asking her if he had just snapped at her. It couldn't have happened any better if he had planned it.

The aftermath was just as he predicted: The prey began to discriminate against the predators. Neighbors turned on one another, life-long friendships were destroyed overnight, Zootopia's ideals were flushed down the toilet in a blind panic. Without Lionheart covering up the savages, every target of Bellwether's, and their victims, made it to the evening news, inspiring even more hatred. Claude had smirked at the sight of Gazelle, Zootopia's Number One Pop Star, telling reporters that this wasn't the Zootopia she remembered.

 _'_ _Too bad, Gazelle,'_ Claude had mused as he sipped his coffee. _'Guess your little music career's going up in flames as Zootopia's soul crumbles. Something tells me your next performance is going to be your last if Bellwether has any say about it. Blue ball straight to those dancing tigers; that'll really give Bellwether the support she needs.'_

He had watched as Judy resigned from the ZPD, believing that she had changed the world for the worse. Claude found himself revising some of his sociological opinions in his debates. He had originally believed that a single person couldn't change anything, that large groups of people were required to make any real social change. Now, he saw that an individual could change things, by providing a viewpoint for the great masses to follow blindly. That certainly explained a few things about the fall of humanity; if more people had instead thought for themselves instead of letting some hero or celebrity tell them what to think and to do, maybe the world wouldn't have gone up in flames and in viral material.

When Judy Hopps suddenly reappeared in Zootopia in her family's truck, Claude was a bit surprised to see her back. When she told Nick that the "Night Howlers" were flowers instead of timber wolves and that they could stop everything that was happening in Zootopia, he had spit his coffee through the holographic monitor right onto the person sitting across from him.

After cleaning up the mess, apologizing profusely, and listening to the TA's ranting, he had found a new monitor and located Judy and Nick just as they were confronted by Bellwether and her personal attack sheep. As Bellwether shot Nick with the Night Howler gun, he was amazed by the sheep's pure manipulative abilities. Turning Judy into a martyr, killed by her own friend, she wouldn't need to make a martyr out of Gazelle; this would be the final straw to turn ninety percent of Zootopia's population against the rest. He couldn't believe that the first phase of his plan was going to turn out so well so soon.

Of course, when Judy revealed they had switched the gun's ammo with blueberries and recorded Bellwether's ranting with her carrot pen recorder just as the ZPD arrived, it felt like his heart had plummeted straight into his feet.

The aftermath of what became known as the "Night Howler Case" thankfully didn't come back to bite Claude in the rear end. Rather, his project's report on Bellwether earned him the highest grade in the class, and he based several of his final papers on the whole incident. It made him feel incredibly smug despite the ultimate defeat of his plan; he had basically given himself those grades by instigating those events and then using them for his workload. What better way to learn psychology and sociology than to engineer situations where one is forced to think about and use those fields?

When he hadn't been studying for his exams and researching for his papers, he had been looking up all the recordings he could find on Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, and by now he had a detailed psych profile on both of them.

Judy Hopps: Grew up in the small town of Bunnyburrow, dreamed of becoming the first police bunny and making a difference in the world. An achiever, driven, very self-motivated. Caring, altruistic, wanted justice not just to punish criminals but to protect. Strong believer in equality, formerly tainted by fear of foxes due to childhood bully. Very clever, good at finding loopholes and thinking outside the box. Idealistic, seeks to see good in others, strong sense of justice and fair play.

Nicholas Wilde: Grew up in Zootopia, never knew father, deeply loved by mother who he later lost. Traumatized by bullying incident with muzzle. Cynical, mistrustful, changing due to Judy's influence. Good at reading others and manipulating them. Exudes self-confidence to cover up pain, opens up only to Judy. Backs down once forced into corner, avoids direct confrontation when possible. Former con artist, now using old underworld connections to fight crime. Fast talker, good on his feet and with his head.

The next day, Claude would off for a two-week visit with the folks before starting his summer internship, which basically meant he would be an errand boy for a psychologist. He would have plenty of time for studying Zootopia and his two new favorite animal police officers. And to figure out another plan for destroying Zootopia from the inside out.

The reason why he wanted Zootopia to fall wasn't that he hated animals. He didn't hate or love them. No, it was that they acted so much like human beings. Hell, most of their culture and social development was identical to that of human civilization leading up to the D-Virus. He had listened to and even joined in several arguments over whether the Zootopia would fall in a manner similar to the way the old human civilization had. He wasn't doing this to win some study room argument. No, he was going to show the optimists, the idealists, everyone in fact, that the Sentient Condition had only one outcome: Destruction from the inside-out.

As Judy Hopps pinned the badge onto the ZPD's newest police officer, Nick Wilde, Claude leaned back in his chair and grimaced as he drained the rest of his coffee. One thing he knew for certain: All Nick and Judy had done was to delay the inevitable. Even without his interference, Zootopia was going to fall. It was inescapable; Zootopia's culture almost imitated the pre-D-Virus civilization's culture, therefore it was going to fall the exact same way. An individual could temporarily stave off civilization's suicide, but in the end, no one could stand against the tidal wave of self-destructive societal forces that had been building since that society's birth.

 _'_ _So, why do I do it then?'_ Claude thought to himself as he got out of his seat and stretched. _'If Zootopia's fall is assured, why do I bother trying to bring it down?'_

He took one last look at the screen as Nick and Judy stepped off the stage to celebrate with their friends and (in Judy's case) family. He smiled as he shut the program down and then the computer. _'Simple. There is no point in delaying the inevitable. Besides, it's fun playing a game when so much is at stake and your victory is assured, even if you're personally defeated.'_

When you reduced sociology to the absolute basics, it was nothing more than multiple psychology cases, all of them contributing to the huge and complex equation that was society. If Judy and Nick's effects on that equation as variables continued to get in his way, he'd remove them from the equation. Permanently.

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 **So, what did you think? Definitely darker than the original movie, huh? Since they never said how Bellwether came to learn of the Night Howler's maddening properties, it allowed me to slip my theory in anyway. Since this is my first Zootopia fanfic, I'd really like to know if my fic fits in well with the movie, so feel free to tell me what you thought in a review or a PM. Also, feel free to tell me if I got anything from the movie wrong. I've only seen "Zootopia" once.**

 **And for the record, I ship Judy and Nick very much.**

 **Hope you all enjoyed my story! Happy reading and writing, everyone!**


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